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Jones, A., Strom, P., Hermelin, B. and Rusten, G. (2016). Introduction: Services and the Green Economy. In: Jones, A., Strom, P. and Rusten, G. (Eds.), Services and the Green Economy. (pp. 1-22). UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137527080This is the accepted version of the paper.
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Chapter 1: Introduction: Services and the Green Economy
Andrew Jones, Patrik Ström, Brita Hermelin, & Grete Rusten
The debate about the emergence of an environmentally sustainable global economy has
become more substantial and diverse in the last decade, and at times arguably more
controversial. Early concepts of the ‘green economy’ in the 1990s (e.g. Jacobs 1996) have
been superceded by a variety of different concepts of how economic activity might become
environmentally sustainable (Bina 2013), what it constitutes (Dryzek 2005), how it should be
measured and a plethora of critiques levelled at competing popular and policy manifestations
of the idea of a green economy (e.g. Le Blanc 2011; Caprotti & Bailey 2014). Yet equally the
concept of a green economy has gained much wider currency as a policy paradigm and
acceptance within state and in international policy discourses (UNEP 2011; UNDP 2012). A
key aspect of this conceptual evolution is the way that the green economy has been reframed
as a combined response to meet economic, climatic and environmental challenges, although
acknowledging in this that enormous challenges around both the commitment of actors and
practical implementation remain (Newton and Cantarello, 2014).
One of the key axes of debate within the social scientific literature in recent years has
however been on the feasibility and nature of a sustainable transition in economic activity,
and in particular the need for a low carbon economy in the context of the ongoing (and
increasingly pressing) challenge of human-induced climate change in the twenty-first century
(c.f. Schulz & Bailey 2014) as well as sustainable development that addresses resource use
and management of ecosystems (Bina 2013). An enormous literature now exists across this
debate about the mechanisms through which such a transition might be achieved, and the
respective role of different actors including governments, firms (Porter and Kramer, 2011),
NGOs and consumers to name but a few (e.g. Mulaney & Robbins 2011; Atkinson &
Klausen 2011). However, within these debates the breadth of different industries considered
as key agents of intransigence or change has been relatively limited. Much has been written
about the energy sector of course focusing on the historical path dependant economic
development of fossil fuel energy (Simmie 2012), and there is a burgeoning literature concern
with the role of transport, construction, agriculture and manufacturing – at least within certain
specific framings of an environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or
recycling materials through product lives (e.g. Cooper 2010). However, with the exception of
Carerra et al 2012), debate about the nature and role of service industries in the transition to a
green economy has been very limited indeed.
The entry point for this book is to develop and make the case for an emerging field of
work from within the sub-disciplinary area of environmental economic geography which
adopts service-based perspective on the transition to a green global economy. The book is
premised on the proposition that there has not been significant engagement with the nature of
role of service industry involvement for the contemporary green economic transition and it
develops a theoretical and conceptual approach which takes service activity as its primary
focus. We argue through this book that the lack of direct engagement with the role of services
represents a significant limitation on the capacity of social science theories to understand the
nature of how a greener economy might come about. This introductory chapter therefore
seeks to provide an overview of how the contributions in this book correspond to an
emerging field of research which foregrounds the role of service inputs and service activities
in green economic development, and which develops an environmental economic
geographical perspective (c.f. Soyez & Schulz 2008; Schulz & Bailey 2014). The latter has to
date paid little attention to service industries but in developing it from a service-based
perspective, we suggest there is considerable utility for better understanding the way in which
different service industries and activities are contributing to a green economic transition both
as provider of ‘green services’ and by providing producer service inputs to other actors
engaged in the transition.
We expand these arguments in the remainder of this introductory chapter around a
number of component issues. In the next section we outline what is meant by a service
perspective on environmental economic geography, identifying what we argue are the
advantages this offers in developing both theoretical and empirical insight into the
contribution of services in the contemporary green economic transition over some of the
narrowly-focused frameworks for theorising service activity that have been developed in
management and international business (Merchant and Gaur, 2008). Our economic
geographical approach seeks to develop a theoretically pluralist approach that makes use of
insight from a range of interdisciplinary bodies of work engaged with the service economy.
In so doing, it enables a fuller understanding of both the breadth and complexity of green
service activity, including in ways that move beyond just considering firms or industry
sectors to a wider range of public and private stakeholders and actors. The third section then
moves on to consider a key conceptual issue which continues to haunt social scientific debate
boundaries of a service / non-service activity or product might be best understood. Here we
seek to clarify the utility of conceptualising different types of services and argue that the
concept has considerable value in epistemological terms, even if its broadness does present
challenges. The following section then continues by addressing the other important
definitional aspect to the topics of this book: the nature of what might be meant by the green
economy. Again we argue that a broad definition has considerable utility but also argue that a
service perspective poses a series of potential ways in which the green economy might be
reconceptualised and implemented The final section then outlines the structure of the rest of
the book, and provides some guidance to the reader as to how the different contributions from
a wide variety of authors working on service industries or activities each contribute in
different ways to our overall argument.
1.1 Environmental economic geography from a service perspective
The book is grounded in an approach that can be termed environmental economic geography
that focuses on a service perspective. This means it explores on the one hand how services
themselves can be sustainable whilst equally being concerned with how service industries
provide a crucial contribution to other industries shift towards a more sustainable economic
activity. The premise shared by both the editors and chapter contributors to this book is that
service sector activity represents an unexplored and under-researched dimension to the
development of the green economy, that not only warrants attention but which needs to be
foregrounded in theoretical and policy discussions of a green economic transition. Much of
the existing research undertaken on the green economy has operated within a conventional
epistemological framing of the economy as a range of different industries that are faced with
a challenge of shifting towards environmental sustainability. Firms within these industries are
seen as agents of change or transition and the processes by which production, distribution and
consumption systems are transformed as being contained within firms in terms of knowledge,
innovation and decision-making. What the authors in this book share is a view that whilst
there is obviously a need and merit in considering specific industry cases, the contribution of
a whole variety of service activities to this process has been largely ignored and consigned to
the background of these change processes. Our argument is that to more effectively
understanding the nature of change and whether or not it will be successful, then the nature
and role of these service contributions to the green economy need to be understood in much
more depth. We suggest to a considerable extent that the success or otherwise of greener
industries operating at a range of scales which are not easily captured by analyses that treat
industry sectors as black boxes containing aspects of the green economy.
In this respect, a service-oriented approach to sustainable economic transition argues
for more integrated perspective based on the assumption that services are integrated into all
types of industries, regardless of the industrial sector. Such arguments have been made using
the theory of service-dominated logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2008) and in discussions about the
“servitization” of economic activities (Toivonen and Tuominen, 2009; Neely et al 2011) as
well as the value creation logic (Ørberg Jensen and Petersen 2014). This is not to seek to
subsume all industry categories into ‘services’ in some broad generalisation but rather in line
with this servitization argument services may be conceived to be a perspective and not
referring to particular activities (Enquist et al 2011). A service perspective means that the
experiences from the side of both clients and customers come in focus and the function of the
economic activity in relation to outcomes becomes the important issue. This
interconnectedness among sectors has also attracted an increasing interest in policy
development in relation to economic integration and international competitiveness for firms
(EU, 2014).
The second important issue we want to raise is how service activities may contribute
to the transition of the society more generally towards sustainable processes. This leads the
discussion towards service activities as mediators, developers and agents for knowledge
dissemination, knowledge development, learning and innovations and that may lead to more
sustainable processes and systems. Economic activities of advanced producer services are
important for future growth and sustainable development but the impact of services is still in
need of further research (Beyers, 2012, Daniels 2012; Bryson et al., 2014). These include
both technical firms (in engineering, ICT and architecture) and those in management,
eco-service infrastructure (e.g. legal eco-services, certification and auditing eco-services, management
consulting and environmental/engineering services) education and other relevant fields. The
importance of advanced services for the innovation system, but also as creators of regional
economic development in both mature and emerging markets is evident (Park and Shin, 2012;
Jensen, 2013). This connects to the growth of sustainable or green economies in the most
rapidly growing emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. The combination of integrated
service systems can enhance the sustainability. The interconnectedness of the global economy
through product trends, production networks or value-chains also shows the difficulty of only
work with greening of the economy in partial geographical areas, when, in the end, it has
mature and emerging economies. Increased co-operation and up-grading of the value-chains
in emerging markets is seen to be of great value for future economic development (Hsu et al
Stark et al., 2014).
A key aspect of this is the role of consultancy services in a variety of forms.
Consulting capability is often needed at different stages of infrastructure and construction
process, product and process development in manufacturing through management and
technical knowledge, industrial design, legal advice, etc. Various chapters in this book also
address issues about how innovation and knowledge development for more eco-friendly
technologies and systems are related to the societal and institutional context. The effects of
environmental solutions also requiere and understanding of geographical scale. This means
that what we find to be a sustainable technological solution on a local level can have a less
positive impact on a larger scale. The use of smart ICT-solutions which reduces the pollution
levels in our cities causing less emissions, might lead to a more harmfull extraction of
minerals used in these devices somehwere else. This also suggests there is a need to pay
attention to how services can be used to reduse the overall consumption by for example
contribute to the production or service systems leading to longer lasting products (the
Matsimuto chapter explores this issue in some depth).
Finally, a third key element to our argument about the need for a service perspective
in considering the greening of the economy is concerned with the nature of policy and policy
development. A range of commentators have argued that there is a need for an holistic
approach to policy development if green economic development is to be successful, and that
a reliance on industry, research and development institutions or government in isolation will
not lead to coherent approach (Ely et al 2013; Atkinsen & Klausen 2011). The EU 2020
Smart Growth initiative is a good example of an attempt to develop such an holistic approach
to integrate the goals of ecological sustainable goals with goals about economic growth
involving a wide range of stakeholders (EU 2012). This program involves the development of
many activities and initiatives from politics and with implications for economic activities.
This is in the form of programs for research and development, arenas and platforms for
meetings and information dissemination, networks, etc. and at different geographical scales.
This means regulations, incentives and resources of different kinds with implication on how
economic activities transform the production or infrastructure to become more green and
ecological sustainable. In that respect, we extend our service perspective on green
development to a whole range of ‘service-like’ activities that are not conventionally classified
bodies, third sector activity and hybrid public-private entities in our service-based perspective
on green development since non-commercial knowledge production, policy bodies, public
sector funding and the constitutions of public-private partnerships are important frameworks
for the development and implementations of “green” solutions that covers the need of society
of as a whole (Ely et al. 2013).
1.2 Defining the service economy: an old debate in ‘green’ clothing?
Having set out the case for a service based perspective on green economic development thus
far, before going any further it is important in terms of the goals of this book to consider in
more depth some of the longstanding (and not unproblematic) debates about the nature of the
service economy itself. Social scientific interest in the nature of the ‘service’ sector is
longstanding, with work spanning a range of disciplines emerging during the 1970s as it was
recognised that a growing proportion of advanced industrial economies GDP was accounted
for by service industries rather than agriculture, mineral extractive or manufacturing
industries (Hermelin & Rusten 2015). This service transition is well rehearsed in a literature
spanning decades, but in the context of the second decade of the twenty-first century and the
focus on this book, a number of key features of the contemporary debate about what the
service economy ‘is’, how it relates to the rest of the economy, and the geographical and
scalar dimensions to service industry activity are important.
First, it is clear that any definition of a service sector to national, regional or global
economies needs to operate with a very great degree of generality. Whilst national statistical
agencies point to the fact that service industries for seventy to eighty percent of GDP in
economies such as the UK, US or Sweden, and indeed increasingly account for over 60
percent of many emerging economies such as Brazil or China, the nature of the service
industries within this classification varies enormously (Illeris 1996). The literature generally
distinguishes service industries by market and by ‘order’. The former enables an important
distinction between producer and consumer services, with industries such as management
consultancy or investment banking falling into the producer service category and hospitality,
retail banking and leisure in the consumer service. To complicate matters further, many
service industries unevenly occupy both categories with, for example, financial and legal
service industries comprising firms that provide services to both groups of customers. With
regards to the concept of order, there is also a debate about the relative importance to
different types of services for economic development and sustainability, wealth creation and
knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) as ‘higher order services industries’ which are
argued to be the key to wealth generation and innovation in the contemporary global
knowledge economy (Bryson & Daniels 2015). High order services have thus been the focus
of much research in relation to their capacity to transform the nature of economies (ibid.) and
clearly such an argument resonates through many of the chapters in this book engaged with
considering how green economic development occurs and whether it is successful or not.
However, what we would highlight at the outset is that an over-emphasis on high-order
service industries may present a narrow and unhelpful account of the role in which services
are leading to the greening of economies. Taking the concept of an environmentally
sustainable economy in its broadest sense, lower order consumer services are important albeit
in different ways from high order producer services. Sectors such as waste management,
construction and local public services are considered in various chapters in this book and
represent a significant aspect to the way in which services are contributing to a green
economic transition.
A second aspect to this debate however is the validity of distinguishing a service at
the level of industries or firms at all. A growing body of research has demonstrated that the
purity of service provision by service firms in service industries is questionable. This even
goes as far as the provision of a given service itself. In contemporary economies, a research
emphasis on production as a process or practice has shown that many producer services are in
effect co-produced across and between service firms and their clients (Ørberg Jensen and
Petersen 2014; Bramklev and Ström, 2011), and potentially with an array of multiple service
providers collaborating and work together in delivering services via projects (Rusten and
Bryson 2010). Obvious examples would be the delivery of foreign direct investments in
different countries where are firm buying a foreign subsidiary would require a whole range of
services (financial, legal, consultancy) from different external firms and enabled by internal
employees in order to undertake the acquisition as a project. The pureness of any given
service itself is therefore problematic to identify, and service-based research has been argued
to maybe be better focused around these service-rich projects in these contexts (Jones &
Ström 2012). Such an insight is highly pertinent to many of the industries and topics
considered in this book in the process of economic ‘greening’, and the fact that a purely green
service sector firm or service activity is hard to purify from non-green activity or agents is
widely evident in many of the cases considered. A key point therefore that runs through the
book is that we are not arguing that the green service economy is easy to disentangle from the
Rather, the book is premised on a conception of the key contribution of service industries,
firms and practices to spatially uneven ‘greening’ processes in the economy, in all the diverse
and messy forms that are currently occurring.
This leads to a third and final aspect to the debate about the service economy which is
important to understand in the context of this collection, and which this book seeks to
contribute to: the uneven nature of the globalization of service firms and industries, and the
increasingly complex spatial form of service sector activity. This is leading to changing
delivery of services and the development of services in different economies and regions
across the planet. Debates about the nature of service sector in the global economy have, as
with other sectors, been increasingly concerned with the rising significance of transnational
firms (TNCs) in service industries, and the globalization of the market for services. TNCs
have become increasingly dominating in many service industries such as banking, retail and
hospitality, although the challenges faced by service firms to internationalize are in many
cases greater than in manufacturing or extractive industries. Many services are embodied
activities, delivered by skilled individuals, and are thus highly sensitive to different national
and cultural contexts (EU, 2014)). Other service industries such as legal services are also
shaped by national regulatory jurisdictions which makes the development of standardised
global service products more difficult for firms (c.f. Jones 2005; Faulconbridge 2010).
However, social science research has increasingly been concerned to examine the role of
KIBS in transmitting industry and business practice norms across the planet, and in fostering
innovation in different national economies. This trend of course has considerable significant
for the theme of this book in seeking to understand how service TNCs are often central in
delivering green services to firms in different national economic contexts which are
propagating the greening of these economies. The particular complexities of how service
firms TNCs including smaller firms piggybacking global manufacturing companies are
entangled in green economic development at a variety of scales in the global economy, and
their relationship to the transmission of knowledge, technological innovation and business
practices is at the heart of our argument for the value of a geographical approach to green
service development (c.f. Faulconbidge 2013). Many of the contributions to this book explore
this spatial dimension to the nature of services in green economic development through the
lenses of local or regional industries, the interactions of TNCs with regional economies or the
way in which global ‘best practice’ or innovation are adopted and implemented in specific
1.3 Theorising the green economy
Thus far we have set out our case for foregrounding the role of service industries in the
greening of the global economy, and considered how current theoretical debates about the
nature of services themselves impact on that topic. However, a further key task of this
introductory chapter is to consider the conceptual issues that exist around the concept of
green economy itself.
Of course, the starting point of this discussion is to highlight that the concept remains
a contested and to some extent controversial one. We do not therefore seek to argue for a
strong definition of the green economy, and many of the contributors in this book engage
with (sometimes subtly) different perspectives on the idea. In broad terms the concept has
developed from political international discussions and it is about the interactions and
integrations of ecological sustainability,economic growth and social inclusion. Environmental
and climate challenges are important backdrops for this direction of political action and at its
heart the idea of the green economy aims to develop more sustainable societies and resource
solutions. UNEP offer a recent definition that has been increasingly widely adopted:
In its simplest expression, a green economy is low-carbon, resource-efficient and
socially inclusive. In a green economy, growth in income and employment are
driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and
pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of
biodiversity and ecosystem services (UNEP 2011: 16)
Such as definition give room for alternative development scenario (ADS) whereby
economic activities bring the promise of a transformation in the way business is done as they
dynamically engage with social relations (around the environment) (c.f. Gibbs & O’Neill
2014). It moves beyond earlier definitions of the green economy through an ecological
modernization lens that represented ‘business as usual’, whereby ‘greening the economy’ was
confined to new products and processes that used less energy and resource inputs, but without
addressing issues of growing consumption or rebound effects (c.f Bina 2013; Lorek &
Spangenberg 2013;). What has happened more recently is an imperative to move beyond
current economic thinking around a range of number of different theoretical directions. We
highlight three here that we suggest are important current conceptual considerations in
understanding what a green economy might be and how it might be achieved, and all of
The first is what might be termed ‘transition management theories’ (c.f. Elzen et al
2004), seeking to understand the economic conditions under which economic systems
innovate and change, leading to a transition to a more sustainable form of economy. Much of
the growing literature has focused on how specific industries or production processes are
evolving towards delivering more environmentally sustainable economic outcomes (e.g.
Markard et al 2012). Transition theory seek to move to a green economy as co-constituted
through the co-evolution of social, economic, political and scientific-technological
subsystems (Smith et al 2010; Foxon 2011; Farla et al 2012). This ‘socio-technical’
approach (Geels 2010) thus does not see the economy as easily disentangled from society,
politics, institutions or culture and therefore aims to adopt a holistic theoretical approach to
how a green economy might develop. However, whilst we and many of the contributors to
this collection find this a useful epistemological framing of how economic systems might
change, it represents more an entry point rather than an approach we simply seek to apply.
Transition management theories have been applied to a wider range of elements to the green
development debate but despite much application to concepts of the green economy, the
greening of firms, green technologies and green entrepreneurship, there has been little or no
direct engagement with the role of service industries in the evolution of the green economy.
We suggest that this is surprising and significant absence in the debate about the nature of
any transition to sustainable economic development. Furthermore, we would argue that a
service-based perspective (incorporating services as products, servitization as a process and
service-like activities) provides a new and potentially powerful way of understanding key
elements of the socio-technical nature of a sustainable transition. Many of the contributions to
this book use transition management theories as an entry point which allows a reframing of
the drivers and mechanisms of transition.
A second approach of considerable importance is the substantial (largely
geographical) literature that has been concerned with the development of sustainable urban
and regional economies (c.f. Altenberg & Pegels 2012; Cooke 2013), and in particular has
focused on how urban sustainability might be achieved. This literature is not purely
concerned with the economy of firms or industries either, seeking to take the city or region as
the unit of analysis for environmental sustainability (c.f. Bulkeley & Betsill 2005; Rutherford
& Coutard 2014; Childers et al 2014). Importantly, however, this literature shares much in
common with work on service economies and the role of (global) city regions in the
development of the service sector (e.g. Chang & Sheppard 2013). It is we would argue a
embedded in specific urban and institutional contexts that shape the capacity and direction of
green service development. The urban sustainability literature also is helpful in framing the
role of non-commercial institutions, labour markets and public sector actors in the
constitution of green service activity since it seeks to adopt a place-bound and multi-actor
perspective on how urban sustainability is achieved.
Finally, and related, a significant body of social scientific work has specifically
examined the nature of green economic development through an institutional theory
approach. Drawing on ‘new institutional theory’ in political science and other theories of
governance (c.f. Geels 2004; Zhu & Sarkis 2007; Bosselman et al 2012; Pinkse & Kolk
2013), a range of different disciplinary contributions have sought to understand how local,
national and supranational institutional contexts shape the possibilities and capacities for
economic development to become more environmentally sustainable. Examples are the
negotiation activities linked to the development of international environmental standards (eg.
ISO certification schemes). Institutional theory permeates much of the current social
scientific literature on green development and in particular link policy ideas and initiatives
which seek to achieve environmental sustainability to the institutional and governance
contexts. With regard to the objectives of this book, and in the case of many of the
contributions, institutional theory provides an important basis to understand how services are
entwined in the transitional to a green economy. It enables an understanding, for example, of
how policy and regulatory contexts both shape and are shaped by service products, the
strategies of green service firms and the way in which innovation is fostered. Many of the
chapters that follow thus draw insight from institutional theoretical perspectives although
many also seek to move beyond a narrow institutional focus in developing the service-led
perspective on the green economy we advocate in this book.
1.4 The structure of this book
The different chapters in this book are organised around three major areas of contribution,
focused around different thematic aspects to the relationship of service activity with the green
economy. These themes loosely progress from more generalised (e.g. green transition
processes) to more specific topics (particular industry sectors) in three successive parts
reflecting the areas of different contributor expertise. The first part examines the broader
nature of service contributions to green economic development with Brita Hermelin’s chapter
beginning with an examination of the wider issues of scale around the way in which
explores a regional Swedish case examining how the interaction of local institutions,
governance structures, corporate networks are all caught up in service inputs into the
‘greening’ of economic processes. The chapter considers how competing discourses around
Local Agenda 21 (LA21) initiatives in different Swedish municipalities shape both service
firm involvement and the scope for an innovative contribution by a wider array of service
industries. The key argument developed is that the concept of a ‘green services‘ in fact refers
to a wide range activities that are present in many different industries and in the private and
public sectors. It also demonstrates that local policy has a powerful influence in shaping the
development of firms providing ‘green services, and that the creation of green services is
constituted through cross-sector interactions..
Such an argument provides a good context for the third chapter in which Grete Rusten
turns to the Norwegian case and the significance of regulatory and institutional frameworks
in shaping the development of certains types of green services within a national economy.
The chapter examines the role of certification management systems which accredit service
firms with certain levels of environmental credentials and thus facilitate access to certain
markets. The chapter presents an empirical analysis of three certification schemes, examining
the level of uptake by firms in different service sectors and how they are geographically
distriibuted across the different sub-national regions. The study reveals the rationales and
motivations for companies to adopt environmental certification and also reveals the important
role an environmental certification consultancy industry within the economy which both
facilitiates and develops the prevalence of certification as a ‚greening‘ mechanism across a
range of industries. It thus provides signfiicant insight into how green KIBS are important in
catylising green economic transition rather than these transformations being purely internally
driven within firms of different industry sectors.
The fourth chapter then moves to consider the relationship of servitization and
greening processses in the economy, in particular looking the role of services in
remanufacturing processes. Mitsutaka Matsumoto and his colleagues argues that knowledge
intensive service sector inputs play a crucial role in the development of remanufacturing
systems that recycle manufactured components and (potentially radically) shift the
sustainability of manufacturing industry activity. The contribution importantly also explores
the blurred boundaries between services and manufacturing, focusing primarily on the way
that many manufacturing TNCs are entering the service business rather than outsourcing
service inputs. The chapter examines through a number of Japanese industry case studies
servitization is playing an important role in the shift to green remanufacturing production
systems in many of the cases it considers, although the process in and of itself will not
necessarily lead to remanufacturing processes developing. Following this, chapter five
provides a complementary but contrasting view by considering the role of external
knowledge intensive service firms in fostering a similar but different form of green economic
transformation in production: the development of green information and communication
technologies (Green ICT). It does this through a regional economy case, presenting research
into the nature of Green ICT development in the Gothenburg region of Sweden. The chapter
reveals however that despite these green service being providing by specialist ICT firms, they
are constituted through multiple actors and need to be understood as the products of a
network of stakeholders including producers, users and regional institutions. The agency of
service firms in developing green economic activity lies in a range of intangibles around their
role in bringing these multiple actors together.
The final chapter in Part I provides yet a further cut at understanding the broader
nature of service activity contribution to green economic development. Here Helge Lea Tvedt
considers not green service firms or servitization within non-service firms, but the role of
what he terms ‘green support services’. These, the chapter argues, are service activities conducted with the purpose of increasing an organization’s (e.g. private companies, hospitals)
environmental performance. Importantly, it further argues that this service activity is not per
se necessarily environmental in nature, but the service input nevertheless contributes to a
better environmental performance by the users. The nature of this aspect to green service
activity is examined through research into two case studies in the Norwegian economy, firms
both specialized in knowledge-intensive services that few other organizations conduct
internally. The chapter considers the role of regulatory context within Norway in the
development of the complex marketplaces for these companies’ services, and thus shows the
significance of local and national institutional context in developing specialist green service
activity.
Part II of the book turns to consider the particular key role of services in the transition
to green forms of energy. In chapter seven Johanna Dichtl and Hans-Martin Zademach
examine the issues around green finance in relation to energy, arguing that the financial
sector has shifted its focus in the last several decades toward the (renewable) energy sector,
driven by the motivation to place its liquid assets profitably in renewable energy projects and
participate in the growth of the renewable energy. This financialization of the renewable
the chapter developing the conclusion that a stable, reliable and long-term legal and policy
framework for renewable energy at the national level is fundamental for investors. In
particular it focuses on what shapes the behaviour of financial service firms, and how this
behaviours shape the overall direction of green energy financing. Analysis of both case study
economies reveals that where there is either legal or policy uncertainty, the capacity for a
green energy sector to develop is greatly restricted and that financial service firms are unable
or unwilling to drive the process.
This echoes to some extent with the argument of chapter eight where Britta Klagge
and Sebastian Reimer consider the nature of carbon offsetting as a financial vehicle at the
centre of a green energy transition. However, the chapter takes a service product / activity as
its focusing, examining how firms in a range of industry sectors based in the German
economy engage with offsetting as part of their operations. The chapter shows that firms’
approaches to carbon offsetting are clearly context-dependent, but also firm- and
industry-specific. It argues that this service product / activity has developed quite dynamically with the
large German firms studied, both as a reaction to changing context conditions and resulting
from experience and learning more about the opportunities, but also the risks associated with
carbon offsetting.
Chapter nine then shifts our attention around service and energy sustainability to an
urban regional context in examining the nature of the ‘smart city’ initiative and the
involvement of service firms, inputs and activities in its development. The analysis by
Harvard Haarstad here again demonstrates the value of a multi-stakeholder perspective to
understanding the role of services in a green economic transition, as well as the blurred nature
of firm / product / institutional boundaries around where service activities are created and
delivered. The chapter presents research into the Norwegian case, showing how the broad
‘smart city’ agenda represents key strategies for making urban energy systems more
sustainable. It examines in particular the role of high-tech business service firms in
developing the smart city agenda, although arguing that they form part of an assemblage of
actors involved in service-like activities that all need to be considered if the implementation
of this approach is to be understood fully.
The final major part of the book comprises three chapters which move to the more
specific scale of individual industries in order to examine how green services are created and
delivered. In the first of these, Kentaro Watanabe and his colleagues examine the Japanese
engineering industry and in particular the development of ‚service engineering‘ in relation to
of service engineering as a paradigm for servitization within engineering and manufacturing.
The uniqueness of the Japanese context provides an important comparator for other national
cases studies considered elsewhere in the book, and the chapter examines a number of
different approaches to service engineering in the Japanense case including energy, footwear
apparel and transportation. It contrasts the relative effectiveness of two approaches deployed
within the Japanese economy – a model-based approach based on theoretical understanding
of product usage and one driven by data drawn from consumers actual use of products.
Overall the argument developed is that service engineering that makes use of both approaches
is likely to be most successful in achieving sustainability goals.
Chapter eleven then moves to a different industry in a different region of the world:
wine production in the Chilean economy. Andrew Berry and his co-authors examine the
development of environmental sustainable practices in the industry over the last 15 years,
showing how external specialised public and private service providers have been the
prominent players in increasing sustainability. These providers not only deliver services
directly to vineyards and wineries, but are also central parts of the upstream and downstream
segments of the wine value chain. The chapter argues that high value added services such as
R&D are assisting wine makers to produce sustainable wine through alternative sources of
electricity generation, sustainable water management as well as genetically modified wines
that do not require toxic chemicals to protect them from pests and diseases. A key driver of
this process is producers and consumers’ demand for sustainable products. Thereafter, in
chapter twelve Christian Schulz and Berenice Preller examine how service firms and service
inputs are a central element of the transition to sustainable construction industry activity.
They seek to develop a management transition approach to the construction industry arguing
that a relational and multi-agency approach is crucial to understanding the complexity of
green development in this sector. The chapter highlights the role service plays in three
particular ways in the greening process: increasing the number of service firms adapted to
new building sustainability, enabling more building firms to transition; service provision
contributing itself to the greening of the final product, and third by transmitting the approach
of early adapters across the industry which inspires more hesitant firms to move in this
direction. As with the other industry case studies, this contribution again reveals the central
but also multi-dimensional role of service activity in the greening process.
Finally, we end the book with a short concluding chapter that seeks to draw together
some of the common insights from the contributions around areas of future research and
to the key challenges that conceptualising green service activity poses given the complex
nature of service embeddedness in the current trends towards environmental sustainability
with future prospects for the economy and society.
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